


Selfish

by double_negative



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: 999 Week, Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene, VLR timeline, just 'what happened to Aoi' i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 07:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20503115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/double_negative/pseuds/double_negative
Summary: So, Akane's gone again.What now?





	Selfish

**Author's Note:**

> It's the 999 week! I have zero content as usual, but I remembered this thing and decided to finish it for Santa Day. This is probably very rough, but it's something.

"I am going to save the world", she tells him with an impish smile on her face, and Aoi wants to scream, wasn't it enough to save yourself? Because when everything is said and done, Akane is his world, because he can't fathom her putting herself in danger so soon after the second nonary game is over. Akane is his world and saving her, just her is completely fine, even if the rest goes up in flames. He shouldn't be this way, knowing what it is like to lose someone, he really shouldn't be, but after years spent chasing Akane, making the impossible a reality, he can't find it in himself to feel altruistic. He's got what he wanted for once, he's not going to let it go to waste.

Aoi doesn't have to say anything though, Akane just knows, her already unnatural sharpness enhanced by a psychic link to her brother makes reading him extremely easy. Or maybe, Aoi just has it written on his face, he could never lie to her, not to her. Her smile is gone, there are hairline cracks in her cheery expression, something ancient and terrifying seeping through.

Aoi hates it when she gets like that, he hates himself for noticing it too. It's imperceptible to anyone who doesn't know Akane well enough, to anyone but him really. Her mask, carefully measured and constructed over the years of meticulous planning is capable of fooling anyone and everyone. Besides Aoi, because he still notices. No person this young should feel as old. No cheerful girl should have the weight of an entire world on her shoulders. No living being can look so dead. There's fire in her eyes. It's conviction. It should be commendable, the nobility, the sacrifice, but it's something much more sinister to Aoi. Nuclear fusion behind his sister's pupils, a power to create just as much as the power to destroy.

"I am not letting you go", he says, trying to stop it, trying to make her think, reconsider, hope against hope, even if he knows he has just as much of a chance as stopping an avalanche with his bare hands. Still, it's Akane, his little sister, there's always a chance, there's always...

"You are".

He is letting her go. She knows that.

"Can I help, at least?", and there's hope in that too. He won't stand by, he would be a part of it, he would make sure, powerless as he is against fate, against the future, that she succeeds once again.

"We'll see about that." Aoi knows she doesn't have to say that, doesn't have to promise anything, doesn't have to sound uncertain as if she hasn't planned it all out already.

He helps, of course. There's a game to be played, not his own this time, with stakes much higher than a single girls life. He hates every second of it, but he still tries for Akane, like he always does, to ensure her success. He can't do much, though, he is no longer one half of Zero. He thinks that being a guy with money, connections and manpower will aid them, but it really doesn't when the game is not his to control.

She fails.

Aoi would try to be selfish about it this time too. It wasn't her fault, it couldn't be her fault, it's Akane and it's all part of some elaborate plan, because of course it is, it's always is. He tries to be selfish about it and in this case it means believing in Akane without a doubt, because if he doesn't believe, what is there left for him? "Selfish" means "sane", and "sane" means a lot to someone who has lost his entire family once again.

She's not coming back. At least not for him. He knows it, just as he knows that there was a cult, there was a deadly virus, there was, of course,, an apocalypse, he gleaned that much from her notes, the files carelessly strewn across the kitchen table in their shared little flat, just like they were before, when they prepared for her resurrection. Only this time, he wasn't in on the entire plan, this time, she said, she needs him to stay behind, she needs him to stay safe.

"Safe", unlike "sane" doesn't mean much in a world slowly consumes by Radical-6. In fact, sometimes it feels like it means "I am leaving you behind, alone, to die", but Aoi is still stubbornly selfish. He believes. He doesn't look for her, he knows that if she wanted to be found, she would have been back with him already. And when the entire world goes up in flames, it becomes impossible to look for her, even with his, with their nearly unlimited resources. He weighs his chances and with every passing day finds less and less hope. She must have done it right, somewhere else. It's just not this timeline, that one is done. Discarded, like every other where she didn't live, so it doesn't matter. What happens to Aoi doesn't matter. He must be so happy and safe somewhere, sometime else. They all are.

He holds the fort though, he has to make sure that when she returns, she has a place to go back to. He's luckier than most, because he at least knows the world is coming to an end and has the time to prepare. To make a safe haven for himself and Akane. To gather supplies, resourses. To seal away from the outside world so the virus doesn't get in. He's luckier than most because at least he's still alive. That should be something. If she returns, she has a place to go back to.

There are two things about the apocalypse that he can't stand. Of course, he'd rather it not happening at all, but without those two things it might have been bearable. First, there's nothing to do. Crash Keys used to keep him entertained, had his undivided attention between the business endeavours and solving conspiracies. There's hardly an organisation anymore after the world is over. He's not sure you can even have an organisation with one surviving member. Well, two.

Second, he is entirely alone. In his efforts to save his little sister, he forgot to make any other meaningful connections. Aoi thinks that even if he tried, he's never been the most pleasant person to be around, so before it was for the best, really. Now his unsociable life feels empty, the void more noticeable. He should have at least tried saving someone else, even if just to keep him company, to satisfy his selfishness. But who? No one ever really meant anything for him.

Aoi riffles through the paperwork, day and night, thumbing at blueprints. There should be a clue. An answer. Something, anything that he missed. Moe and more he finds himself gravitating to the participants files. He wonders, what has happened to them, even if before he really did not care at all. Or acted like he didn't care. He's still not sure which.

He never knew the full extent of what happened to other versions of him. Akane called it simply "bad ends" and told him that their fate was for the other Aois to ponder and deal with only. "Like a drunk would say: it's a problem for a sober me to solve", she would laugh. If she didn't say, it must have been truly terrible. After all that, Aoi should just be glad that he's the version who not only stayed alive, but kept the others alive too. Scarred, maybe, from a kidnapping and participating un a murder game, but still living. Maybe. Trying to survive in a world post Radical-6, he thinks that maybe dying in a nonary game wasn't so bad after all.

Still, if they're dead now, it is at least not his fault this time. And so he decides to check. It's fairly easy, seeing as the organisation kept tabs on every participant in case they leak any information pertaining to the crimes he and his sister committed, but also in case they tried looking for them after what they did. Like Junpei, for example. He's joined some kind of private investigation company in hopes of tracking Akane down. He won't be able to, of course, since even her brother who was in on most her plans isn't able to, but still, just in case, the organisation was there to act as a buffer between him and the unknowable uncertain truth. Junpei was in the Dcom too, wasn't he? So he had a chance to meet Akane again before he lost her... That seems to be a running theme. Looking for that idiot though... wouldn't spending time with him just remind them both of who they lost?

There's Seven who works with Junpei, running after the same cult Akane was. He's with Hazuki now, that old lady, raising her kids together. If Hazuki is still as cunning as she is, they must be alive. Knowing about Free The Soul should have prepared them at least a little bit. Bothering them seems like a shitty idea. Family matters and all, he has no time for that crap.

Ace... Gentarou he couldn't give a fuck about, honestly. Most likely dead or still in jail. Aoi hopes for the former though.

And then there's the Fields. They too joined a secret organization, too were after Brother. But something bothers Aoi. There are a lot of notes on Clover, more than there should ever be. So he pours over them, trying to make sense and what he gathers, makes his heart wrench painfully in his chest. Clover is part of Akane's insurance policy. Someone who will play a game again, but in the future. She is to be frozen, stuck in time until she's needed, brought back to life.

Which means that Light is out there somewhere. Alone. Not really knowing what even happened, just having his dearest younger sister disappear on her own, never to come back...

So it is decided then, he tells himself. It may be selfish to look for company from a person who must hate him, but at least they had shared experiences. Maybe they bond over it. Maybe Light kills him for helping Akane take his sister away all over again. Either way, it's a goal.

What are the chances he's still alive though?

**Author's Note:**

> This may turn into aoilight apocalypse survival fic, but I really don't know if I am able to write long-form.  
I will never forgive Uchikoshi for just forgetting about the best characters. I really want to give Aoi and Light something because they've been torn apart from their sisters in almost every timeline. Permanently in most too.  
I also wanna write a Safe end fic, just because. But it's probably going to be miserable self-destructive aoipei if I ever do.


End file.
